Cold Harbor • Tour the Battlefield • Monuments & Markers • The Armies
“The Ultimate Sacrifice” trailside marker is the last on the Cold Harbor primary walking trail. From here it is about 500 feet back to the Visitor Center.
The photo looks past the marker and Confederate entrenchments on the ridge and through a gap in the woods to the open fields below, where Union attackers were slaughtered.
Text from the marker:
The Ultimate Sacrifice
The losses sustained by both armies during the Wilderness to Cold Harbor campaign made the world shudder. Casualties by some estimates averaged 2,000 per day, and at Cold Harbor nearly 18,000 soldiers were killed, wounded, or captured.
While Confederate dead were removed and taken to Richmond, Union dead were hastily buried in shallow trenches near where they fell. In 1866 burial parties scoured the battlefields, collecting the remains and reburying them just east of here. Today 2,000 Union soldiers lie buried at the Cold Harbor National Cemetery.
Location of the marker
This is the last marker on the Cold Harbor primary walking trail. It is just a short distance from the previous marker, “Nowhere to Go”.